Elizabeth Brown combines a composing career with a diverse performing life, playing flute, shakuhachi, and theremin in a wide variety of musical circles. Her chamber music, shaped by this unique group of instruments and experiences, has been called luminous, dreamlike and hallucinatory.
Brown was born in 1953 in Camden, Alabama, where she grew up on an agricultural research station. After receiving a Master’s degree in flute performance from The Juilliard School in 1977, she started composing in the late 1970’s. Brown teaches shakuhachi at Columbia University and Bard College, and teaches theremin at Bard as well. She is married to visual artist Lothar Osterburg.
Brown began studying shakuhachi in 1982 and its music has been a major influence on her musical language. She is celebrated both in the United States and Japan for her compositions combining eastern and western sensibilities. Since winning grand prize in the Makino Yutaka Composition Competition (for Japanese traditional instrument orchestra) as well as a prize in the Senzoku Gakuen Shakuhachi Composition Competition, her music has performed in Japan by Pro Musica Nipponia, Reigakusha, and Orchestra Asia. She writes extensively for Japanese traditional instruments, including recent pieces for Satsuma biwa and percussion, shamisen and cello (commissioned by Duo Yumeno), and shakuhachi and shamisen. Other notable pieces include Arcana, for flute and recorded sound; Brown’s chamber opera Rural Electrification, for theremin, voice, and recorded sound; ongoing collaborations with artist Lothar Osterburg such as Piranesi, for theremin, string quartet, and video, and A Bookmobile for Dreamers, a forty-minute performance for theremin, recorded sound, and video; the installation Collected Visions, a collaboration with photographer Lorie Novak, which has been presented by the International Center of Photography in NYC, the Smithsonian Institution’s National African American Museum Project, and the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson; Delirium, Archipelago, and Seahorse, all featuring the original microtonal instruments of American composer/inventor Harry Partch; and numerous pieces for the Momenta Quartet, with whom she has an ongoing relationship. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.